The Death of Cardinal Bernard Law and the Legacy of Clergy Sex Abuse

Banished from Boston and protected in Rome, Cardinal Bernard Law became a symbol of the Catholic hierarchy’s failure to reckon with its crimes—a failure that continues today.Photograph by David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe via Getty

In the spring of 1989, a group of black-clad clergy gathered to bury one
of their own—a Boston priest named Father Joseph Birmingham. Presiding
at the funeral was their leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, who died himself on Wednesday, in Rome. As the obsequies for Birmingham drew to a close and
the crowd began to disperse, Law was confronted by a man named Thomas
Blanchette. He identified himself as having been sexually abused as a
child by Birmingham, who would ultimately be accused of having molested
more than forty boys. In 2002, Blanchette told the Boston Globe what happened next; Law “laid his hands on my head for two or three
minutes. And then he said this: ‘I bind you under the power of the
confessional never to speak a word of this to another.’ ”

Law never admitted saying such a thing, but why would Blanchette make it
up? Of all the gruesome details that surfaced during the Globe’s investigation into Law’s years-long protection of rapist priests, this
incident, for a Catholic, epitomizes the perversion. What Law did in
response to a traumatized victim was to reverse the meaning of the Seal
of the Confessional, the solemn Catholic mandate that forbids priests
from revealing anything said by a penitent in the sacred forum of the
Sacrament of Penance. In doing so, he was seeking to protect not only
the one priest but also the clerical structure of power to which, even
dead, that priest still belonged. Law was prepared to twist the
Sacrament itself to his own foul purpose, even exploiting the ritual
gesture of hands imposed on a vulnerable penitent’s head. This was a
savage abuse of Catholic piety, obviously intended to intimidate and
silence. It amounted to a sacrilege.

But then, of course, the entire saga of Catholic sex abuse—thousands of
priests harming tens of thousands of young people; the worldwide
Catholic episcopate protecting the abusers instead of the children—is a
sacrilege. And, no, it has not yet been finished with. Law’s death is a
reminder not only of the hierarchy’s grievous failure during the
sex-abuse crisis but of the way in which the Church has yet to reckon
with what the crisis laid bare.

Law’s own fate offers an object lesson in Vatican denial. After he was
forced to resign as Archbishop of Boston, in 2002, he was rescued from
disgrace by Pope John Paul II, who appointed him to one of the most
prestigious positions in Catholicism—Archpriest of the Basilica of St.
Mary Major. It was a clear signal of support. After all, Law had merely
implemented the Vatican’s own policy of reserving to Church
jurisdiction, instead of civil authority, the abuse of children by
priests. As a 2001 directive from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later
became Pope Benedict XVI, put it, crimes “perpetrated with a minor by a
cleric . . . are subject to the pontifical secret.” That Law, banished
from Boston, was then protected in Rome meant that the entire structure
of misogynist clericalism—all male, sexually repressed, blatantly
dishonest—was protected, too. That structure is intact, protected still,
even by the otherwise liberalizing Pope Francis. On Thursday, Law will
be laid to rest in Rome with the full panoply of observances due an
honored prince of the Church, with Francis himself pronouncing the final
blessing. The ongoing grief, rage, and heartbreak of abuse survivors will not, one presumes, be acknowledged.

The Church thinks of itself as the body of Christ. That body is wounded
to the core, and the Catholic people—including the legions who can no
longer bear to associate with the institution—are the ones who bleed.
The hierarchy is in as much denial as ever. Law was both its scapegoat
and its hero. He was properly disgraced. If he was then protected by
Popes and bishops, it was only as their way of protecting themselves.
Yet, in the end, Law’s attempt to bind the deadly secret failed. At a
time when the voices of women, especially, resolutely refuse to be
silenced, the Catholic hierarchy’s own attempts to keep the secret of
its sexualized power will fail, too. Law, despite himself, was the
harbinger of the coming truth.